Conventional pre-crash safety (PCS) systems detect an object located in front of an own vehicle, and performs a task of avoiding a collision between the object and the own vehicle upon determining that there is a high probability of a collision between the object and the own vehicle. As the task of avoiding a collision, a warning outputting task and/or an automatic braking task can be used.
It is assumed that, in a place, such as an urban area, where many pedestrians are located in front of an own vehicle, the PCS system of the own vehicle is activated for each of the pedestrians when the pedestrian is detected as an object located in front of the own vehicle. In this assumption, the PCS system is activated for a pedestrian detected even if the pedestrian is slightly moving ahead of the own vehicle with no intention to cross ahead of the own vehicle, thus performing the task of avoiding a collision between the own vehicle and the pedestrian, such as a warning outputting task.
For this reason, what is needed is to determine whether a pedestrian located in front of the own vehicle is crossing ahead of the own vehicle with higher accuracy, and change the activation condition of the PCS system in accordance with the determination result.
The technology disclosed in patent document 1 is configured to determine whether a pedestrian as an object is crossing ahead of an own vehicle in accordance with the history of movement of the pedestrian.